4 Responses to “Valencia Hotel: 1906”

Much of the neighborhood sits on some pretty sloppy fill. If you look at old (really old, BJ) renderings of this part of town you would notice a slight resemblance to Tiburon/Belvedere. There was some water and a lot of marsh between Mission Dolores and Potrero Hill.

Its filling was not exactly done by rocket scientists (cause there were no rocket scientists in those days, duh) and that showed in the 1906 quake. Like the Valencia hotel basically sinking.

A structural engineer friend of mine told me that because of code, the best built buildings in the city for earthquake survivability actually happen to be none other than the dreaded (by some, not by me) live-work lofts. Because of their hybrid commercial/industrial/residential status, he explained, they have a much higher level of fortitude than a mere condo.

So when the big one happens, dear live work loft haters, keep in mind, they may be the only thing left standing. They, and Kink.com. It will be a neighborhood of nothing but Prius driving techies, and porn stars. Sounds like heaven to me.

That sucks, because the lofts are an inefficient use of space and resources. Families can’t live in them, only yupster singles and couples; you can’t grow much food in them, because the buildings’ footprints occupy the whole lot (they’re not real housing, hence no need for a yard); and not much work can be done in them, apart from the pointless manipulation of bits and bytes. Not to mention the incentives and concessions granted to the developers, which deprived the city of needed revenue. The lofts are an economic debacle, a total fucking black hole, depriving the city of real housing, real jobs, and real revenue. They’re Willie Brown’s greatest fuck-you to the city. Thanks, Willie!

Actually, considering what the city needed during the dotcom boom when those things were being built a lot, they seem like just what the doctor ordered. My experience, from living next to one, is that people who need them live in them just until they need kid space, then move out — leaving them to the next round of techie cyber-youth. And the idea of any such person needing or wanting space to grow food makes me laugh like Frank Gorshin playing The Riddler.

Dude, if every goddam lot in the city has to have a garden, you have painted yourself into an argumentative corner in which you will starve to death.

“Two beers and the boring by-product playbook of trustafarian SF State faux-gressive indoctrination” would be a more comprehensive handle for you, tb. There is nothing wrong with lofts, nothing wrong with having some housing that is not for families. In fact, I think that like Amsterdam, and Manhattan, and the urban core of many great cities, the absence of kids is not a big deal. Adults can be adults without having kids running all over the place. It sounds like something Reagan would have said… “family values.”

[...] St Gulch, The Willows, Valencia St Hotel KevMo at MissionMission recently referenced the classic shot of the Valencia St. Hotel between 18th and 19th after the 1906 earthquake. But that shot doesn’t do justice to how [...]